Last month, the Pentagon released a new report on climate change (PDF). In his foreword to the report, Defense Secretary Hagel cautions that a warming earth “will have real impacts on our military and the way it executes its missions”: The military could be called upon more often to support civil authorities, and provide humanitarian assistance and disaster … Continue reading A New World War
[Re-posted from earlier today] That’s the headline for a Washington Post piece today trying to come up with an answer for the president’s drag on the Democratic fortunes tonight. And, to my mind, it really doesn’t come up with a decent answer. It offers a mere chronology of events and never quite shows what Obama … Continue reading Where Did Obama Go Wrong?
I watched two decent documentaries on the Islamic State this weekend – long overdue. The Frontline version is pretty tough on the Obama administration – in part because they start the story the day US forces formally left the country, rather than when the US first arrived. And so you see only half the picture. … Continue reading The US vs The IS
It seems safe to say that the GOP will pick up the Senate this year. No one can quite know the details yet, and the scale and extent of the wave (or not) remains again up in the air. But what this actually means – for policy and this presidency – is a more complicated … Continue reading What Do These Midterms Mean?
Updated: 5.2M Tunisians head to the polls, with a new consitution and a sense of optimism http://t.co/jjUQek648D pic.twitter.com/HlJHK5EZQc — Al Jazeera News (@AJENews) October 26, 2014 Big election news out of Tunisia, where the moderate Islamist party Ennahda has conceded Sunday’s vote to their secular rivals Nidaa Tounes: Official results have yet to be announced, … Continue reading The Flower Of The Arab Spring
Lone wolf Martin Couture-Rouleau roughly fits the profile of the next wave of terrorists. http://t.co/vprgAUjTCG pic.twitter.com/N2wckyAHav — TorontoStar (@TorontoStar) October 26, 2014 To Jacob Siegel, last week’s attacks in Canada and New York are examples of the new model for terrorist violence in the West: In recent years, terrorist networks have become more connected to a Western audience at the same … Continue reading The Lone Wolf Era?
Reading the remarkably reported NYT story on the unimaginable horrors endured by the Westerners captured by ISIS makes the more harrowing scenes from this season of The Walking Dead seem tame. The sadism, the brutality, the torture, the isolation, the terrible loneliness and terror: it’s all there, a stark sign of the sheer, unbridled evil … Continue reading The Waterboarding Of Americans
Here is a Facebook photo of Cpl. Nathan Cirillo. He was 24 years old. pic.twitter.com/Be0bMlANBl — CTV News (@CTVNews) October 22, 2014 The Globe and Mail reports on Michael Zehaf-Bibeau, the suspected shooter. He had been named a “high risk traveller” and blocked from leaving the country because of fears that he might become a jihadi: “He wanted … Continue reading What The Hell Just Happened In Ottawa? Ctd
Map of cities taken by #BokoHaram. A hugely underrated force in Africa. pic.twitter.com/TKiqLBHIAn — Dawood (@Suleiman_Dawood) October 20, 2014 On Friday, news of a ceasefire between the Nigerian government and Boko Haram raised hopes that the 219 kidnapped schoolgirls from Chibok might finally be released, but with the truce already in doubt, nobody is daring to celebrate too soon: … Continue reading A Breakthrough With Boko Haram?
We are still, of course, waiting for the Senate Intelligence Committee Report to be released to the public. It’s been forever since it was finished, and forever since the CIA managed to respond, and the endless process goes on and on – even after John Brennan’s attempt to spy on the very committee supposed to … Continue reading Obama And Torture: The Record Gets Worse
